Competency Framework Of Employee Engagement

INTRODUCTION
The concept of employee engagement was first described by William Kahn in 1990 in the academic literature. He described it as “the harnessing of organization members’ selves to their work roles: in engagement, people employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, emotionally and mentally during role performances”.
So it can be very well said that employee engagement is the link between the organisation and its employees. It can also be implied that it is the relationship between company performance and employee potential. Employee Engagement is unlocking the employees’ potential to drive higher performance. It’s the mutual commitment resulting in the capture of discretionary effort.
An engaged employee is fully absorbed,

Historical Research
There aren’t much literature work done on competency based framework on employee engagement. But there are a number of literature on employee engagement and competency.
In the academic literature, employee engagement was conceptualised by Kahn in 1990 as indicated earlier. Later,Towers Perrin (now Towers Watson) defines employee engagement as the connections people have with their organisation, across three dimensions (that echo Kahn (1990)):
• Rational: the extent employees understand their roles and responsibilities (thinking)
• Emotional: the level of passion employees bring to their work and organisation (feeling)
• Motivational: employee willingness to invest discretionary effort to perform their roles well (acting).
Hogg(1993) defined competency as ‘competencies are characteristics of a manager that lead to the demonstration of skills and abilities, which result in effective performance within an occupational area. Competency also embodies the capacity to transfer skills and abilities from one area to

The concept of competency gained attraction when McClelland and Robert White did work on it. McClelland suggested that although intelligence influences performance, personal characteristics, such as an individual’s motivation and self-image, differentiate successful from unsuccessful performance and can be noted in a number of life roles that include job roles. McClelland and his associates conducted the first tests associated with this new approach with U.S. State Department Foreign Service information officers (McClelland & Dailey, 1973, in Spencer, McClelland, & Spencer,